


All Of My Best Decisions Are Made After Midnight

by ix_tab



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-01-15
Updated: 2012-01-15
Packaged: 2017-10-29 14:16:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,219
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/320808
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ix_tab/pseuds/ix_tab
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alex can't stop dwelling, and no matter what, can't stop hoping.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All Of My Best Decisions Are Made After Midnight

Alex doesn’t miss prison, not really. But fuck, he misses pointless rules, and the joy it brought to break them. He misses feeling like if he slipped, if he broke, then the damage he caused, it wouldn’t matter. And now he sleeps on a soft mattress, surrounded by soft, sweet people, in this house, a testament to soft living.

That’s not entirely fair, he thinks, drinking coffee in the dead of night, in the safe dark of the kitchen. There was no one here who had it perfect. Hell, the professor was proof of that. No matter how cool he played it, the prof had lost his friend, his sister, his legs on the one day, and then his spy girlfriend never came back. Sucked to be him, he ponders.

He doesn’t know that he fits here, either. Maybe he’d have been better taking Angel’s hand, stepping up and running off with the bad guys. After all, everyone here’s lost someone. But him…it was his power, his gift, curse, whatever the fuck people called it, that had killed Armando.

After all the urgency went away, after they stopped focusing on saving the world from the ships and the missiles and the old rich men in suits playing games with millions of lives, all Alex has left is the way Armando turned to him, body undulating, warping its fight to maintain itself under the onslaught of Alex’s power.

Hank’s brought it up awkwardly before with him, that Alex wasn’t responsible. But he can’t change how he feels. Shaw may have been the conduit, but it was Alex’s energy sliding down deep into Armando, through his mouth.

He remembers the way Armando looked so shocked, and there was no noise, just the silence of death. And Alex has done some bad shit in his short life, stuff he’s not proud of, but he’s never hurt people he cared about before. He’s never been a fucking murderer.

And really, that’s what stopped him stepping up and joining up with Erik’s crusade. He gets it, he hates humans looking at him like he’s a monster. He hates being afraid, he hates every time he meets another mutant and they look haunted, broken.

But, the professor is right, you can’t kill and expect everything to get better. He doesn’t want to go out and hug puppies and give bouquets of flowers and glitter and hope to the humans, but he’s not going gonna go bathe in their blood either.

The X-men annoy him, frustrate him, but he’s their man. Even if sometimes he wants to rub glue through Hank’s fur, and poke holes in Sean’s flightsuit.

He’s worn out with thinking about this shit though. He throws his cup in the sink, and stalks outside, breathing in the cold night air. He’s not happy, not really but he’s better then he’s been in a long time.

He just wishes that Armando was there with them. The huge house felt ridiculous with them in it before, but with Raven, Angel and Erik gone…sometimes it feels like he’s alone for miles around him.

He doesn’t like that.

In prison, even though he’d been locked up in his own private box, he could still hear the sounds of life all round him. The mansion doesn’t have that, but he figures the rich have better building quality then state run prisons.

He just wants someone he can punch in the shoulder and have it not feel like bullying, he wants someone who doesn’t look at him like a fascinating science experiment (he’d banned Hank from trying to scrape his skin cells), or like the cool kid in school who smoked behind the bleachers (he’d told Sean that he wasn’t going to help him score with babes).

Armando hadn’t done that. Armando had looked at him like he was a man, plain and simple.

Alex lies on the damp grass of the mansion’s lawns and tries to remember everything about Armando that wasn’t his death. Armando had been tall and lanky, with a quick smile, and gentle. But he hadn’t been nervous or awkward. He had learned them, found a place within their little group so fast, his personality as adaptable and intelligent as his powers.

Alex thinks back, he’d been so sulky, so angry when he’d first gotten out of the prison, and it felt like everything was just there to frustrate him. The first other mutants he meets, and all of these motherfuckers can control their powers.

There’s no-one else with his powers, and none of them seem to have his problems. It dulls the relief he feels at finding other freaks. Even among the outcasts, he gets to be something to be afraid of.

And then he meets Armando, and it’s like the edge of his despair disappears. Armando smooths over his rough edges when they gather in a group, making a gentle joke out of his snapping temper. And Armando never made him feel bad about it either. Armando was like his translator to talk to normal people.

Fuck he misses him, misses what they could have had. It’s just the universe shitting on him again, that he began what felt like the best friendship he ever had, and his own stupid power killed it, killed Armando.

Alex scrubs at his eyes roughly with his sleeves. He’s not Erik, he hasn’t been broken enough to cry easily, and he doesn’t know if Armando would want him to cry.

He looks at the sky and wishes they knew someone with the power of do-overs. The night is as cold and unforgiving as his mood, and he feels the build up of tears again. But he doesn’t want to sob, he wants to scream and let things burn. He wants to leave trails of fire everywhere he walks.

Sudden sparkling light, dancing in the corner of his vision interrupts his poor mood. He can’t tell if it’s some strange light reflecting in the light fog that lay scattered around the garden, or weird bugs, but it’s pretty. He feels oddly charmed by it, distracted from his misery, his brooding.

And it makes him realise how cold he is, in his thin sweat pants, and beaten up old t shirt. Goosebumps are prickling up and down his bare arms, and the chill in the air seeps into him. It’s enough discomfort to make him move back to the house, back to his bed.

He casts an eye back to the strange light, but it seems to be dissipating, flickering off into the ether. He shrugs. He’s got enough problems that ‘why are there some odd glowing spots in the garden’ wasn’t really registering.

He stumbles into his cell…room, and lays, staring around his blank walls. Everyone keeps making subtle (or just flat out asking him) remarks about his refusal to personalise his space. They don’t get it. It’s going to take more then a smile and a hug to assure him that this place is his. He’s already seen the ease with which it can be ripped away.

He closes his eyes, and wills himself to sleep. He wants no dreams. He just wants to breathe out until he’s empty, a shell drained of all these regrets, grief and memories.

He sees nothing but grey.


End file.
